Education in the Arts Program

The Institute for Education in Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna offers teacher training programs covering the following subjects:

Art Education - Art and Communication

Design, Architecture, and Education - Contextual Design

Textile Arts - Fashions and Styles

These teacher training programs qualify graduates to teach the subjects of Art and Communication ("Bildnerische Erziehung"),Contextual Design ("Werkerziehung"), and Fashions and Styles ("Textiles Gestalten") at state-run and private educational institutions. The courses offered are designed in such a way as to enable students firstly to acquire interdisciplinary skills in the fine arts and purpose-oriented design, and related fundamental skills in technology and media, and secondly to engage in reflection based on insights from cultural studies and in the practice and theory of being an educator of art and culture. The programs are geared to provide students with extensive skills which go beyond teaching qualifications and make graduates suited for work as cultural educators, in art and cultural studies, and in design and artistic fields.

The teacher training program Education in the Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna must be combined with the studies of at least one other school subject. The Institute for Education in the Arts offers three school subjects, two of which can be chosen for one diploma program (internal combination). However, students also have the option of studying just one of these subjects at the Institute and enrolling a second one at another Austrian university (external combination).

Apart from the usual school-leaving or similar certificate, applicants for the degree course "Education in the Arts" at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna are required to pass an admission examination. Please find further information on the Admission examination below.

The teacher training programs offered at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna are based on a notion of art and culture that critically reflects upon changes within society. The result is a definition of art and culture that forms a framework for cultural expression and social production to be mutually dependent. Art and culture are considered to be a locus to be inhabited, something to be negotiated, comparable to a language that constitutes and reconstitutes itself and its speakers as it is used. On a methodological level, this is manifested by the combination of cultural production, reflection, and communication. Within this context, cultural production stands for the ability to articulate one's creative ideas, which contains - without being limited to - the notion of art; cultural reflection is the capability of understanding and embedding artistic, creative, and social action in discursive contexts; and communication is the principle of dialogue whereby art and culture are conveyed, a principle which is defined by interaction with a variety of target groups and formats.

While the teacher training programs Art and Communication, Contextual Design and Fashion and Styles are each focused on different aspects of cultural activities, they are also integrative in nature. The mutual interrelatedness in diversity aims at breaking with historical conventions determining artistic practice and cultural education both within schools and elsewhere. Specifically, this means that everyday culture is increasingly integrated into the thematic fields and practical forms of art, design, fashion, architecture, urban life, and textile practice. In this context, everyday culture refers to a wide range of expressions of life, both urban and rural, connected as much with pop, style, and practices of resistance as with popular culture and rituals of adaptation, and equally well versed in new technologies and old craft traditions.